HONG KONG — As China has become a major theme in the electoral battle between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, so has “China bashing.” In fact, just about anything either of them says about China now is bound to be construed in the media as “bashing.”

“China-bashing in the campaign could backfire,” warn the editors of Bloomberg View.

“Romney and Obama try to compete in bashing China,” scolds the Christian Science Monitor.

“Bashing China has become a ritual in presidential campaigns,” laments the Kansas City Star.

But is that fair? As Clyde Prestowitz of Foreign Policy argues in a recent column, “It’s not ‘China-bashing’ if it’s true.” So in order to see whether there are valid points buried in all the rhetoric, GlobalPost has examined the main statements made by the candidates in hopes of distinguishing the legitimate criticisms of China — if there are any — from the plain old, red-meat, nationalist “bashing.”

What we found is that “China bashing” might have something in common with Michael Kinsley’s famous definition of a gaffe — it sometimes reveals an inconvenient truth. 

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